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16 Tips for Building a Powerful VoC Program in 2016

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To enjoy such benefits, however, your company’s customer

experience initiatives must be organized and supported by a

well-planned Voice of the Customer (VoC) program. With that in

mind, we’ve put together 16 expert VoC tips that will help drive

your company’s VoC program toward success in the year ahead.

A positive customer experience can improve customer retention,

attract new customers, increase revenues, and improve

employee engagement.

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Define and Design

A successful VoC program starts with planning.

–1. Align your VoC program with your company’s

overall business goals.

Establish clear objectives and success criteria for your VoC program

based on your business goals. Be sure to design a program that will

deliver both tactical and strategic benefits.

–2. Plan for the future of your VoC program now.

Most VoC programs start out small. Over time, however, you should

expect that your program will mature and grow. What will your grown-

up VoC program look like? Plan ahead so you will be prepared

when the time comes to scale your program to satisfy ever-evolving

company goals.

–3. Choose KPI metrics that provide the right

information for your unique business needs.

When it comes to metrics - one size does not fit all! The most

successful VoC programs often implement a combination of

metrics based on departments, goals, feedback channels,

and/or brand standards.

–VoC matters to your revenue

n In 2016 89% of

companies expect to

compete mostly on

the basis of customer

experience.

n 74% of consumers have

spent more due to good

customer service.

n U.S. brands lose

approximately $41 billion each year due to

poor customer service.

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–4. Choose the right technology to support your VoC efforts.

Choose a flexible, scalable, reliable, and stable software solution that can accommodate omni-channel data

collection, analysis, and reporting. Look for a one-stop, feature-rich solution to gain maximum value and

insight from all your feedback and research projects.

–5. Get help from a VoC expert.

Implementing a truly successful VoC program can be challenging. Don’t risk failure by trying to do it alone.

Partner with highly trained and experienced experts to guide you through the process. They can help you

achieve the results your company needs from a VoC program.

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Listen

Listen to all of your stakeholders via every channel.

–6. Collect data at every touchpoint to build a

holistic picture of your customers’ experience.

To really understand your customer, you must have a complete

view of all of their interactions with your company. It is important to

provide your customers with an opportunity to provide feedback at

every touchpoint.

– 7. Plan for mobile.

A strong mobile VoC strategy will facilitate in-the-moment customer

feedback with technologies like beacon and location triggered

surveys. It will also make it easier for your customers to respond

to your feedback requests, increasing customer participation and

improving the quality of your data.

–8. Let your customers “speak” freely.

There is a lot of value in allowing a customer to go “off script” with

open-ended questions and unstructured text answers. You may

discover new product ideas or uncover previously hidden problems.

A text analytics solution can automate the analysis of customers’ text

responses, categorizing text and determining their sentiment. This

automation can save you hours of effort while providing extremely

valuable insights.

–VoC matters to your customers

n 60% of consumers have

higher expectations for

customer service now

than they did just one

year ago.

n 97% of global

consumers say that

customer service is very

important or somewhat

important in their choice

of and loyalty to a brand.

n 76% of consumers

say they view customer

service as the true test

of how much a company

values them.

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–9. Listen to what your customers and the wider marker are saying about

your company.

Social media sites, like Twitter and Facebook, as well as forums, discussion boards, and blogs contain

discussions that can provide a rich source of insight into product design, performance, competitive

intelligence, and more. Social analytics can help you capture this unsolicited feedback by crawling and

filtering a wide range of social media sources.

–10. Never forget the impact of employee engagement on your

customer experience.

An engaged workforce is at the heart of an engaged customer base. A Voice of the Employee (VoE)

program including engagement, onboarding, and exit surveys is your sure-fire route to increasing employee

engagement – and that means reduced churn, lower costs, and a strong corporate culture.

–11. Get the boots-on-the-ground perspective on the customer experience.

Surveying your employees about their day-to-day interactions with customers is also a great way to gain

insight into events and trends impacting your business. Bring together the Voice of the Employee and the

Voice of the Customer to uncover insights that will generate significant return in investment.

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Analyze

Analyze structured and unstructured data to get a holistic view of your customer experience.

–12. Break down data silos that negatively impact

your customer experience.

Collect, aggregate, and analyze customer, employee, research data,

alongside contextual data from your internal business systems – such

as financial or CRM systems. Organize all this information into a single,

smart hub that facilitates advanced analysis and holistic reporting

across ALL your customer data.

– 13. Leverage reporting and analysis to understand

what customers are saying. Then, dive deeper.

While high-level metrics and reporting are enlightening, metrics alone

may not go deep enough. Dive into customer, employee, and market

feedback to identify trends, key drivers, and deeper issues that impact

the company.

–VoC matters to your employees

n Companies with great

customer experience have

2X as many engaged

employees as customer

experience laggards.

n Customer experience

helps to drive employee

engagement through a

shared sense of purpose.

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Act

A successful VoC program is all about taking action.

–14. Take action on customer, employee, and market feedback quickly.

A VoC program is only valuable if you take action to improve the customer experience. At a tactical level,

you must quickly respond to dissatisfied customers, but it doesn’t stop there. Be sure that you are resolving

key drivers of dissatisfaction at a strategic level, too.

–15. Use your VoC program to identify new areas of opportunity.

You can find opportunities for innovation in almost all stakeholder interactions, such as how your customers

find, select, purchase, and actually use your products and services. VoC programs are a powerful way to

collect information to feed innovation and drive operational efficiencies.

–16. Engage your entire organization in your customer experience efforts.

Share VoC findings throughout your organization using role-based dashboards and/or customer

experience “portals”. In this way, you can break down data/information silos that undermine your

customer experience efforts.

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The Voice of the Customer is extremely important to the modern business. Not only

does it represent the most valuable arbiter of future financial performance for an

organization, but if nurtured appropriately, it can also provide an unrivalled source

of innovative ideas that will help you deliver the outstanding experiences that

customers demand.

By implementing these 16 tips you will be able to build a powerful Voice of the

Customer program that delivers tangible return on investment for years to come.

Even with these tips, we know that setting up a successful VoC program is tough.

Rest assured, Confirmit can help! Our team of highly trained VoC experts is ready

and waiting to guide you through the entire process to make sure that you achieve

results your company needs from a VoC program.

The Voice of the Customer

Sources:

http://bit.ly/1V29ENG

http://bit.ly/1Ol9hid

http://bit.ly/1NJnkIz

http://amex.co/1jjphTa

http://gtnr.it/1QIro1J

http://bit.ly/1Z44xNw

http://bit.ly/1RJPqbG

http://bit.ly/1Kbz4SV

http://bit.ly/1Q2VV9o

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Confirmit helps businesses operationalize feedback to drive change throughout their organizations using the world’s most secure, reliable and scalable solutions for Voice of the Customer, Employee Engagement and Market Research programs. Confirmit’s solutions enable companies to run feedback and research programs that increase revenue, reduce costs and promote culture change.

Confirmit powers Global 5000 companies and Market Research agencies worldwide with a wide rangeof software products for feedback / data collection, panel management, data processing, analysis, and reporting. Customers include Aurora, British Airways, Cross-Tab, Dow Chemical, GfK, GlaxoSmithKline, GMO Research, JTN Research, Keep Factor, Morehead Associates, Nielsen, Research Now, RONIN, Sony Mobile Communications, Swisscom, and The Wellcome Trust.

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